Towards an Ecology of Vagueness

Correia, José Pedro; Franke, Michael

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-15931-3_6

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…This work is also continuous with research that explores how convex meanings and vague terms can evolve in sim-max games (Correia & Franke, 2019;Franke & Correia, 2018;Jäger, 2007;Jäger & van Rooij, 2007;O'Connor, 2014). It should be noted that the set of distortion-minimizing regions for the quantization of a random variable is a Voronoi partition (Cover & Thomas, 2006).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The evolution of efficient compression in signaling games

Imel¹

2023

Preprint

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Converging evidence suggests that natural language meaning systems are subject to an efficiency constraint: maximizing simplicity and informativeness (Kemp et al., 2018). It re- mains less clear how languages optimize for efficiency over time. Towards illuminating these dynamic aspects of efficient communication, we provide a model grounded in evolutionary game theory. We consider a similarity-maximizing signaling game in which a Sender and Receiver evolve to communicate about a richly structured meaning space, and per- form simulations of adaptive dynamics that require minimal rationality assumptions about agents. We show that emergent languages converge near the achievable bounds of efficient compression given by Rate-Distortion Theory. This unifies static, information-theoretic accounts of communicative efficiency with dynamic, evolutionary accounts of how meaning can emerge ex nihilo in biological systems.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The evolution of efficient compression in signaling games

Imel¹

2023

Preprint

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What Is the Value of Vagueness?

Lanius

2021

Theoria

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Classically, vagueness has been considered something bad. It leads to the Sorites paradox, borderline cases, and the (apparent) violation of the logical principle of bivalence. Nevertheless, there have always been scholars claiming that vagueness is also valuable. Many have pointed out that we could not communicate as successfully or efficiently as we do if we would not use vague language. Indeed, we often use vague terms when we could have used more precise ones instead. Many scholars (implicitly or explicitly) assume that we do so because their vagueness has a positive function. But how and in what sense can vagueness be said to have a function or value? This paper is an attempt to give an answer to this question. After clarifying the concepts of vagueness and value, it examines nine arguments for the value of vagueness, which have been discussed in the literature. The (negative) result of this examination is, however, that there is not much reason to believe that vagueness has a value or positive function at all because none of the arguments is conclusive. A tenth argument that has not been discussed so far seems most promising but rests on a solely strategic notion of function.

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Towards an Ecology of Vagueness

Cited by 2 publications

References 43 publications

The evolution of efficient compression in signaling games

The evolution of efficient compression in signaling games

What Is the Value of Vagueness?

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